I use this blog to gather information and thoughts about invention and innovation, the subjects I've been teaching at Stanford University Continuing Studies Program since 2005.
The current course is Innovation Timing (Winter '17).
Our book "Scalable Innovation" is now available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Scalable-Innovation-Inventors-Entrepreneurs-Professionals/dp/1466590971/

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Why building cars is not fun?

NY Times recently pointed out the vast difference in jobs and market value between information and manufacturing companies

Facebook has about 2,000 employees worldwide. Google has about 29,000.
Even in its new, slimmed-down state, General Motors, a decidedly less
valuable company, has about 200,000 employees.

What escapes this analysis is that hundreds of millions of people work for Facebook and Google for free. That is, Facebook is built around users creating its content; Google is built around people searching free content created by others. Gaming is another area where millions of users spend innumerable hours on building free stuff: virtual farms, cities, worlds. Sometimes they even pay their own money for doing that. But nobody wants to design or build cars for General Motors for free. The next breakthrough in social networking will probably come when we get the online community to produce sellable electronic stuff beyond virtual gold. Just 1% of the total effort could produce huge value.

Game publishing company Electronic Arts‘ newest social game, The Sims Social,
has passed social gaming supergiant Zynga’s Farmville and now has 36
million monthly active users just under a month after its launch,

Electronic Arts is now the second top Facebook app developer with 77.8
million monthly active users. Its well behind Zynga’s 273 million
monthly active users, but it’s much further than the next closest social
game maker Wooga, which has nearly 40 million monthly active users
across all its games. Before The Sims Social launched, Electronic Arts
had around 29 million monthly active users, according to AppData.